Culture

The Greencards

Australia is one of just a few foreign lands where American country music has truly flourished. Maybe to execute country music really well it's necessary to wholeheartedly embrace certain uniquely American forms of poor...

Read More

Manuel Valera

From its earliest days, American jazz has been influenced by its southern neighbors, from Mexico, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Jazz rhythm and phrasing reflects the clave beat of much Afro-Cuban music, but the connections...

Read More

Ypsilanti Garden Tour

The Ypsilanti Garden Club's 2004 Garden Tour exemplified every gardening principle found in modern landscape books — laying out gardens like rooms, creating added interest with garden art, installing water features,...

Read More

Beth Patterson

If there were ever an artist who won on points for ambition, Beth Patterson's the one. She sings lead vocals and, on her recordings, backup too. She plays an arm's-length list of instruments. She writes her own songs,...

Read More

The Jaycees’ Carnival

It's hot, all right, and although I'd rather be home hanging out in the backyard, my boys have noticed the carnival and been promised a ride on the bumper cars. They don't forget. The parking lot is full of teenagers...

Read More

Daisy May & Seth Bernard

When all those American Idol contestants take a simple note and add all those extra frou-frou decorations, they somehow turn music into sport — a yawner contest to see who can add the most frou. When Daisy May does it, it...

Read More

Bebe Neuwirth

She's so much more. Bebe can dance. She made her debut in A Chorus Line as a dancer, appeared in two Bob Fosse dance reviews, and won her first Tony in his revival of Sweet Charity. Bebe can sing. She won her second and...

Read More

Sara Paretsky

I don't read enough detective fiction to get passionate about the nuances that distinguish different writers. I read it for fun, and I'm comfortable with my stereotypes. I think of British detective fiction as being...

Read More

Preston Woodward

When you listen to Preston Woodward, you quickly get the feeling that listeners should be sitting around him in a circle, outside in the dark woods, drinking ale from clay mugs and throwing logs on a fire. I guess you could call...

Read More

FUBAR: Suddenly

Suddenly is an appropriate name for FUBAR’s debut CD only in this sense: You’re waiting around a long time for someone you expect. You give up hope. And then your visitor shows up, suddenly. Or maybe the title is...

Read More

Eastside-Westside

Western Michigan artists express a regional style distinct from eastern Michigan artists'. Maybe. That's the premise under exploration at the Gallery Project, on South Fourth Avenue, in its sparkling debut show,...

Read More

Farm and Garden walk

Last year the Ann Arbor Farm and Garden Association’s annual garden walk was scheduled for a Saturday in mid-June when my husband and I were going to be in Stratford. So that I could write about the walk for the Observer,...

Read More

Grievous Angel

Take four seasoned musicians; mix in acoustic and electric instruments; flavor with country, bluegrass, blues, and rock; serve with clear, lilting vocals and close harmonies. It’s a recipe for down-home, rootsy music, and...

Read More

John Prine

The last time I saw John Prine was . . . well, let's see. He's been some kind of soundtrack throughout a whole lot of my life. I've sung his songs, played his songs, put my kids to sleep with his songs, cooked dinner...

Read More

Elizabeth Kostova

The quick way of summarizing Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian — a 650-page novel about vampires — does not come close to describing her accomplishment. Vampire books create expectations — prose perhaps a little overdone...

Read More

MacHomer

MacHomer: it's got everything the original's got and more. It's got regicide, fratricide, infanticide, and suicide — all the things you've already come to know and love about Macbeth — and it's...

Read More

Steve Amick

At the Michigan Songwriters' Festival at the Ark last January, Ann Arbor native Steve Amick sang "I'm Sorry for You (If You Don't Live Here)," his rousing and only slightly ironic chronicling of a few of...

Read More